Soft Patch 2, Not QE2, Is Main Influence on Rates: Caroline Baum
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When it began, some thought it might not run its course. Now that it’s ending, there are those who think another installment is needed. The “it,” of course, is the Federal Reserve’s second round of large-scale asset purchases, better known as quantitative easing.
The lender of last resort will single-handedly have accounted for more than 80 percent of the Treasury’s coupon issuance from November through the end of June: $773 billion of an expected $946 billion of new cash raised through note and bond sales, according to Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey.